How did we reach the point where I’m the optimist in the righty blogosphere?

Since [April 10], three stories have dominated the political news cycle. The first came when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic operative, said Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.” The next came when the Romney campaign promoted a Daily Caller story recounting that Obama had eaten dog as a child in Indonesia. The most recent came as Obama decided to spike the football before the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing, releasing an ad suggesting Romney wouldn’t have made the same call.

In all of these cases, the Romney campaign has taken the bait, reacting to whatever Team Obama has decided to make an issue…

While these stories continued to dominate the political headlines, negative economic news poured in. Just in the past week, the Commerce Department reported that the pace of economic growth slowed to an anemic 2.2 percent in the first quarter and payroll processor ADP reported the private sector added just 119,000 jobs in April, far lower than expectations. The Labor Department releases its monthly report Friday…

If the campaign is about bin Laden, identity politics and silly controversies about dogs, an Obama victory is a lot more likely. To seize control of the campaign, instead of merely being reactive, Romney has to put Obama on the defensive about his own record.

Actually, it’s because I’m pessimistic about voters’ attention spans and ideological priorities that I’m optimistic about Romney’s chances in this dumb distraction derby that we’ve been having lately. My hunch is that the 10 percent of the public that’s going to decide the election doesn’t start paying attention until the conventions in late August and then doesn’t really buckle down until the first presidential debate in early October. All of this crap about Hilary Rosen and the dog on the car roof may help very marginally — you never know what an undecided voter might pick up in his/her half-hour of news-watching per day — but I think it’s mostly makework for the campaigns and chum for political junkies. That’s why I go over the top with expressions of worry in my silly posts about early polls: Those polls are completely meaningless right now but they’re tasty chum so we have to pretend like they’re somehow worth talking about. Needless to say, the election will be decided by what GDP growth and the unemployment rate look like circa October 1, not by who’s leading by three points in Virginia today. In fact, I put so much stock in the economy as a deciding factor in the election that sometimes I think it almost doesn’t matter what Romney’s own economic message is. And maybe he thinks so too:

“My vision for America is very different than this president’s vision,” said Romney, who spoke on the floor of Exhibit Edge, a female-run company that specializes in making signage for trade shows.

“What he’s done over the last three and a half years is install a series of policies that have made it back-breaking for many small businesses,” said Romney. “And made it harder for our economy to reboot and put people back to work. What I would do, people ask me what would you to get the economy going and I say, well look at what the president’s done, and do the opposite.”

That’s a lame soundbite but it works as a summary of the “referendum” nature of this election: Do something different. If the economy looks sufficiently crappy five months from now that swing voters come to that conclusion, he’ll win regardless of whatever else is happening. To the extent any of the recent distractions matter, I think they matter chiefly in how they affect the “likability gap” between Obama and Romney. Rosen suggests that Ann Romney’s too rich to appreciate the hardships of raising a family; liberals make hay of Romney’s “weirdness” in putting Seamus in the kennel on the car roof; even O’s Bin Laden ad, which dealt with a bona fide policy matter, was chiefly about suggesting that Romney’s too gutless to make the call on OBL that Obama did. All of it’s aimed at creating a sour caricature of Romney for low-information voters which some of them may pick up on as a general impression of him, and which may end up informing their judgments of the policy merits of both sides later on when they start paying attention. That being so, Romney might as well fight back and try to turn the distractions against O. The Rosen attack quickly backfired and put her on the defensive; the Seamus thing became a springboard for righty jokes about Obama’s dog-eating; and the Bin Laden ad led to a round of criticism for The One about politicizing counterterrorism. By making these distractions about Obama and the left instead of Romney, it makes it less likely that the takeaway for low-information voters who are half-paying attention will be the caricature of Romney intended by the White House. And without that caricature, they’ll cast a less forgiving eye at bad economic news from Obamanomics a few months from now.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/03/is-obama-winning-the-election-by-feeding-the-media-lots-of-dumb-distractions/feed/85193981How I learned to stop worrying about “manufactured” outragehttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-manufactured-outrage/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-manufactured-outrage/#commentsThu, 26 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0000http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=41171Or perhaps it is how I learned to start being concerned about “manufactured” outrage. It depends on how you look at it, I suppose.

After all, when I read generally conservative columnists like Matt K. Lewis or John Podhoretz disdaining “manufactured” outrages from different angles — even when the GOP may enjoy some temporary advantage from the kerfuffles of the current campaign — I am not entirely unsympathetic. Indeed, I am already on record arguing that institutionally, the GOP should not engage in these controversies, but note that Democrats have been generating them to distract from the anemic economy and the Obama administration’s record on the issues Americans care most about. I think that’s pretty close to Podhoretz’s position, if I’m reading him correctly.

On the other hand, I recognize at least two problems inherent in the position of disdaining these distractions entirely.

First, there is at least a whiff of condescension involved. I do not think those upset by the Obama administration’s plans to infringe on religious liberty as part of Obamacare are just pretending to be upset. I doubt the progressives who seem so passionate about increasing access to abortion and birth control are playing make-believe (beyond the notion that such access is “free” in terms of money or overall liberty). People who denounce a Democratic honcho who let her mask slip to suggest stay-at-home mothers don’t really work are not entirely engaged in hype. I may think economic growth, exploding public debt and the entirety of Obamacare to be bigger issues, but it would be elitist to deny there are real issues at the heart of most of the supposed sideshows of the campaign so far.

This is even arguably true about this campaign’s dog tales. Admittedly, whether Mitt Romney once transported his family dog atop his car or Obama ate dog as a child in Indonesia (with little apparent regret as an adult) has no direct policy consequences. On the other hand, Podhoretz admits Democrats became interested in the Romney dog tale because of the effect it had on Mitt’s favorability in focus groups. Moreover, the intersection of moral psychology and politics is a hot topic these past months. And in this regard, it is notable that when asked whether it would be wrong for a family to eat the family dog after it was killed by a car, it turns out that the only group that thinks it alright is college-educated liberals. The swingiest of swing voters are almost by definition not particularly moved by policy arguments, or they would be partisans. America is still a free enough country that we get to tell this key bloc that dog tales are unimportant, but they don’t have to listen.

The second major problem with ignoring campaign sideshows is Utopianism. As Podhoretz notes, opposition research is democratized in the Internet Age. And Lewis concedes that ceding the field to Democrats on these issues may be necessary to win elections (and thereby address those “real” issues). There is nothing in American history, let alone the history of the Internet Age, suggesting that a handful of pundits — or even concerted efforts by candidates and their teams — are going to stop these controversies. To rhetorically shovel against this tide is in one sense noble, but also unconservative to the degree that it pretends human nature is so easily molded by the political realm.

In short, while I still think it helps the GOP to use these kerfuffles to say Democrats want to avoid discussing the economy and Obama’s record, there is probably a role for those who want neutralize or reverse their effect.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.To see the comments on the original post, look here.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-manufactured-outrage/feed/34192425Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/14/quotes-of-the-day-997/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/14/quotes-of-the-day-997/#commentsSun, 15 Apr 2012 02:01:20 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190362“When it comes to the Mommy Wars, the only thing that’s more predictable than overwrought emotion and disingenuous indignation is the fact that everyone always misses the point: it’s all about the money, honey…

“Whether you’re a father with a stay-at-home wife, a working mother with a partner, or a single mother on her own, the buck stops with you if you’re providing the primary financial support for your family—and that responsibility is often terrifying. We all have our wide-awake-at-3-in-the-morning nights, and no doubt Mrs. Romney has endured her share. But her worries, however grave, have never included the ability to feed her kids or keep a roof over their heads — and those are problems that regularly torture countless American women.”

***

“You’d have to be a monster to deny that Ann Romney has had a rough time of it these last few years. Breast cancer and multiple sclerosis? We should obviously sympathize and send her well wishes. But nothing about that should prevent us from also looking honestly at her background and asking how representative a symbol of twenty-first century American womanhood she is. Liberals shouldn’t sneer at the fact that she never held a job outside the home (if only Hilary Rosen had phrased it in the clinical, social science-y way I just did, this ‘controversy’ probably never would have erupted!). But conservatives have no business pretending that she represents anything beyond what she in fact is, which is a woman who was born to fantastic privilege and who married into even more fantastic privilege, and who simply hasn’t had to make the hard choices that many women have to make. She turns out not even to represent stay-at-home moms very well at all, and if Republicans think this little fracas is rallying stay-at-home moms to their reactionary cause, they’re deluding themselves…

“The Census Bureau studied this question for the first time (?!) in 2007, and the results were, to me, totally surprising and fascinating. Stay-at-home mothers, you probably think, are more likely to be white, well-off, proper, all-around June Cleaver-ish. Uh, June Cleaver was around 50 years ago and lived on TV. In today’s actual America, stay-at-home moms are more likely to be: younger; Hispanic (Latina, if you prefer); foreign-born; less well educated. About one-quarter of married mothers of children under 15 didn’t work outside the home, the bureau found; and fully 19 percent of that one-quarter had less than a high-school degree, while that was true of just 8 percent of working mothers. This suggests pretty clearly that a significant number of women who stay at home don’t do so by choice, but because they don’t have marketable skills—or because they can’t get jobs that pay enough to cover the cost of childcare.”

***

“Why did Democrats feel such an urgent need to distance themselves from a comment that was 1) accurate — Romney doesn’t exactly have much in common with the 75% of women who now work for a living — and 2) frankly inoffensive? (I happen to agree with the Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus that Rosen’s only real fault, in the Anderson Cooper exchange, lay in forgetting to use the politically correct phrase ‘work outside the home’ instead of the politically toxic word work to describe the remunerative activity Romney didn’t have to engage in.)

“That the Democrats felt such a need to throw Rosen under a bus suggests to me that they, like the Romney campaign itself, are guilty both of knee-jerk cynicism in regards to female voters and of being out of touch. We all know, on the one hand, that there’s a certain portion of the population that feels not just left behind but generally dissed by what they identify as the evolution of attitudes and mores in our era: they’re the Sarah Palin constituency. But these conservative women were never going to vote for Obama anyway. If you widen your sights beyond them, the larger truth about American women (and men) reveals that the deep-seated attitudinal divisions that once underlay our great national drama over women’s roles, and over working motherhood in particular, are now largely a thing of the past.”

***

“When Ann Romney’s husband, who faces a gender gap in some polls, uses her experience and insight as a megaphone for women’s concern over fewer paid jobs, he mistakenly assumes that all women are fungible. Which was, I take it, Rosen’s original point.

“Although Ann Romney may be a fine spokesperson on some issues, the dirty little secret of angling for female votes is that while all women’s work, inside or outside the home, has the same worth, as Michelle Obama and Barbara Bush sweetly expressed, all women do not have the same interests. Women who work in the home do not have the same interest in the recovery of the formal job market as women who have to work for pay. Indeed, wage-earning women probably have more in common with their paycheck-dependent male co-workers on the subject of economic recovery than with household laborers such as Ann Romney…

“Women whose work consists of caring for their households and children don’t need to worry about being paid less than their male counterparts. First, they aren’t paid at all, in any formal sense, and second, unless their husbands take a male spouse alongside them — an unlikely social development — they won’t confront sex discrimination at their workplace. Actually, Romney himself, a proud member of the capitalist economy and of a religious minority with a history of discrimination, has more in common with female workers than his wife does in discouraging arbitrary workplace discrimination. Ann Romney huffily reminded her husband’s detractors that some of his best employees have been women. But they were his employees; why is he using his wife to get that message out?”

***

“Roughly 73 percent of American moms are now working. It’s not only how our families work, it is how our economy works. Two-thirds of American families rely on women as breadwinners or co-breadwinners. In fact, most American kids’ economic survival depends on a woman in the work force…

“Lost in this retro war of words is the fact that most mothers today work hard to take care of their children and at the same time, they have to work hard to earn a living elsewhere. Conservatives and progressives can debate the merits of whether that is a good idea — but it’s the reality in which most American families live…

“Rosen was forced to apologize, but she really shouldn’t have. Being a mom (stay-at-home or not) is hard work for most people, but the parts of it that are hard work, figuring out how to feed, clothe, and shelter your kids, how to educate them, how to keep them safe in a dangerous world, are things that don’t exist when you’ve got $250 million in the bank. When you’ve got that kind of cheddar, even the chores associated with parenting (stay-at-home or not) cease to count as work. If you’ve got a quarter-billion in the bank and you’re still doing your own laundry, that’s a hobby.

“But absent the pressures of everyday life for the average American parent, the actual raising of children, being there for them, loving them, whether it’s full-time stay-at-home style or struggling to fit it in with a job, isn’t work. It’s a privilege, and I think most Americans (excepting the entrenched culture warriors who would vote for any Republican with a pulse), when faced with the offensive notion that Ann Romney’s struggles as a multi-hundred-millionaire mom somehow mirrors their own, will be more put-off than sympathetic.

“That’s why the President and his team’s handling of this has been so wrong-headed. President Obama cast Rosen’s remarks as an attack on Ann Romney, but it wasn’t. It was an attack on Mitt Romney for fixing his entire policy focus on women around whatever he and his ultra-privileged wife banter about while they’re trotting around on dressage horses. If he told a crowd that he was taking her policy advice on something else that she knows nothing about, say, foreign policy, no one would have any problem with this sort of critique.”

***

“For the last many years, I have been the single most important influence on my children. Yes, they go to school (public school, yet); and yes, they both have thriving social lives; and yes, I’ve been unable to insulate them from a Leftist pop culture that is hostile to traditional norms and to conservatives generally, but I’m still the most important person. Of all the influences in their lives, I am the one who is most present, most consistent, and most trusted. I’m sure they’ll pull away as they get older, and they may even rebel, but I’ll still be that little voice in their brain, imparting facts, values, and analyses.

“I am the counterweight to the state. Therefore, I am dangerous. I am subversive simply by existing. My love for my children is a dominant force that works its way into their psyches and that trumps the state-run schools and the state complicit media world. Some mothers, of course, are entirely in sync with schools and media. They happily reinforce the statist message. But those of us who don’t are a powerful anti-statist force and we must be challenged.

“The Left’s problem with Ann Romney transcends her husband’s wealth, her (and his) Republican identification, and her decision to work for her children, rather than for a paying employer. The Left’s problem with Ann Romney is that she represents the triumph of the individual.”

“But what she meant to say, I think, was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work. No one’s denying that being a mother is a tough job. I remember I was a handful. But, you know, there is a big difference between being a mother, and that tough job, and getting your ass out of the door at 7 a.m. when it’s cold, having to deal with the boss, being in a workplace, where even if you’re unhappy you can’t show it for eight hours. That is kind of a different kind of tough thing.”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/14/quotes-of-the-day-997/feed/758190362Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/quotes-of-the-day-996/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/quotes-of-the-day-996/#commentsSat, 14 Apr 2012 02:31:09 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190257“The flap over Hillary Rosen’s comments disparaging stay-at-home-moms like Ann Romney has gotten a lot of play. I’ve been on the record (okay, on Twitter) mocking the feigned Republican outrage. Something about it just didn’t sit well with me.

“This, of course, puts me at odds with the Republican ‘team’ who sees this as a huge win (it is) for their side. It may be smart politics, but it’s still damned depressing. It took me a while to figure out my visceral disgust at this issue. It turns out, there are a lot of things to hate…

“If you’re on the Republican team, the thing to do is to jump on this and blow it out of proportion (a week ago, of course, the thing to do was to downplay Limbaugh’s comments.) I’m not on a team. So I think I’m a bit more consistent in saying that both ‘wars’ were bogus…

“Phoniness is, perhaps, the least admirable quality one can possess. But we’ve seen a lot of phoniness of late. This is silly season, after all. There is no Republican war on women. There is no Democratic war on moms. The truth is that the people pulling the strings who seem angered by this are actually feigning outrage. And the people who are truly outraged are being manipulated by them. It’s truly sad.”

***

“If this first week of the general election has taught us anything, this is going to be a long next six months. It started with the Obama White House and campaign hammering away at the ‘Buffett Rule,’ which was more of an effort to embarrass Mitt Romney (and his low effective tax rate) than a realistic policy proposal. And then on Wednesday and Thursday, the Romney campaign seized on comments by Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist with thin ties to the White House, who said that Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life. It was a manufactured controversy — fueled by Twitter and social media — because no serious political actor in this presidential contest is criticizing stay-at-home moms or the value of the work they do. In fact, Rosen was referring to the Romneys’ wealth, not Ann Romney’s decision to raise her five sons at home. While the two major parties are fundamentally divided (over taxes, entitlements, the role of government, and national security) and while so much is at stake (control of Washington, potentially two Supreme Court justices), we find ourselves smack-dab in the silly season…

“The fact is, these next few months before the conventions are probably going to be filled with these manufactured ‘shiny metal object’ controversies because of what we noted — just how professionalized both political parties are at creating them. And some in the media are easily susceptible to helping these manufactured controversies go viral because they are seen as simply ‘more interesting’ than the serious ‘eat your vegetables’-like issues that divide the two parties.”

***

“The first problem is outrage magnification. Let’s say that you believe that Rosen’s comments that stay-at-home-of-five Ann Romney had ‘never worked a day in her life,’ even construed the way she intended to construe them, violated a sensible boundary that exists in the real world. When boundaries are violated, we tend to want to see the violator punished, or reproached. Fair enough. Fairer still is the deep stakes that liberals and conservatives have in the debate about women, gender roles and the economy. Here’s the thing: without the help of the conservative universe, no one would have noticed. There would be no controversy. There would be nothing.

“But Mitt Romney, by his own admission, needs women to like him. And therefore, he needs to find ways to prove that he’s on the side of women. And his campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and the conservative tribe, has been looking for a way to force Democrats to defend their own views of women in a way that shifts the spotlight from Romney’s record to something else. To turn Rosen’s remarks into something graver, the level of outrage had to be magnified, artificially. The story can’t be ‘Democratic consultant says something dumb on CNN.’ It has to be ‘Democratic consultant says something so outrageous, something so harmful, that we sober politicians are going to spend our entire today DEMANDING punishment, and justice, for you, Jane Q. Citizen.’ To get from nothing to everything requires the manufacturing of outrage, which is very easily magnified by the tribal instincts of activists, which, in turn, is easily broadcast by social media…

“There are skillful psychological manipulators on both sides of America’s two islands, and elections often degenerate into cycles upon cycles of outrage signification. This is perhaps fortunate, in that it keeps parity in the system. It is unfortunate because it is an artificial construct designed to bring out the worst in people.”

“In this case, the Rosen controversy, like the ‘Etch-a-Sketch’ flap, is unlikely to have a significant effect on the outcome of the campaign. It was a wasted day for those who produce and consume political news and will probably have few real-world consequences…

“Journalists need to start taking accuracy concerns on Twitter more seriously before the next Rosen-style frenzy claims someone else’s reputation.”

***

“1. It’s a victim mentality. No, it’s a firmly held reaction to Hilary Rosen’s demeaning comments which were part of a long history of attempts to marginalize conservative women. Defending against the Obama campaign’s phony ‘war on women’ campaign theme, implemented through liberal communications operatives like Rosen, is not playing the victim. It’s standing up for what is right and just, and if we do not stand up for Ann Romney, then we don’t stand up for ourselves. Have we learned absolutely nothing from the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin, in which many Republicans acquiesced? No more…

“Rosen touched a nerve for a reason grounded in history. A history we don’t want to see repeated daily through November 6.”

***

“It’s fascinating to me how the calls for censorship of Rush lasted only so long as the elite realized that such demands that women be spoken well of were going to hurt them far more than conservatives (see, for example, Obama megadonor Bill Maher worrying about fallout and comedian Louis C.K. having to cancel his appearance at the D.C. radio and television correspondents dinner).

“I’m more than fine with people condemning ‘too much outrage’ over the Hilary Rosen remarks. But if those people didn’t spend weeks condemning the media water-carrying of the Sandra Fluke public relations campaign, as I did, then they will forgive me for not taking their concerns too seriously here.”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/quotes-of-the-day-996/feed/366190257Palin: Rosen “awakened many Mama Grizzlies”http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/palin-rosen-awakened-many-mama-grizzlies/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/palin-rosen-awakened-many-mama-grizzlies/#commentsFri, 13 Apr 2012 20:16:53 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190167Yesterday, the HA faithful debated Sarah Palin’s reaction to Hilary Rosen’s comments before she had even given that reaction — so I figured the least I could do would be to put this out there for y’all to rehash.

On “Hannity” last night, the original Mama Grizzly weighed in on Rosengate, echoing many of the sentiments that had already been expressed throughout the day and also adding her own unique perspective. Her most salient point: When she ran for vice president, some on the left actually criticized her for not staying home with her five children. Clearly, it’s not a “mommy” thing, Palin pointed out. It’s a conservative thing.

True. When was the last time you heard Nancy Pelosi criticized for anything at all related to her five children? Why is it conservative families are fair game, but liberal families are off-limits? Thank goodness President Barack Obama at least made that point: He has no patience, he said, for attacks on politicians’ spouses. Neither should we.

Palin also specifically says she thinks Rosen’s comments awakened “apolitical” moms. More and more formerly apathetic individuals are waking up (I’m ashamed to admit it, but I myself was pretty apolitical in 2008, watching idly as many of my peers campaigned for Obama and doing nothing more to stop his election than casting my vote for John McCain) — but plenty of people remain oblivious to the political landscape. While I don’t think it’s necessary for every individual in the country to obsessively follow the news cycle, may I just say that I hope it doesn’t take Obama or his surrogates specifically attacking every segment of the country before we wake up and realize what’s at stake in the 2012 elections? If ever there was a time to be political, it’s now.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/palin-rosen-awakened-many-mama-grizzlies/feed/567190167Obama aides: This whole Hilary Rosen episode shows that Obama is willing to take on his friendshttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/obama-aides-this-whole-hilary-rosen-episode-shows-that-obama-is-willing-to-take-on-his-friends/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/obama-aides-this-whole-hilary-rosen-episode-shows-that-obama-is-willing-to-take-on-his-friends/#commentsFri, 13 Apr 2012 18:31:04 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190141Two of Barack Obama’s top aides took to the airwaves last night to spin the Hilary Rosen episode in Obama’s favor. David Axelrod and David Plouffe both said the controversy illustrates Obama’s willingness to stand up to his friends and contrasted his response to Rosen’s comments with Mitt Romney’s response to Rush Limbaugh’s recent inflammatory remarks about Sandra Fluke.

Doing damage control, White House adviser David Plouffe and Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod made separate appearances Thursday night to contrast Obama’s public response to Rosen to Romney’s response to controversial comments made by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

“I think we have an obligation in politics and public life, when someone, even friends, say things that are inappropriate, to say so. In fact, in certain ways, when your friends say it, there is more of an obligation to do so,” Axelrod said on CNN. …

In making his argument, Plouffe specifically pointed to last month’s controversy over Limbaugh, who called a Georgetown University law student a “slut” on air due to her testimony on the White House’s contraception mandate.

In contrast, the Obama administration was quick to “strongly condemn” what Rosen said, according to Plouffe.

“I’ve been disappointed on the other side of the aisle just recently when Gov. Romney and others were not willing to stand up and denounce speech that most people would call inappropriate,” Axelrod said. “I thought we had an obligation to speak and speak very, very quickly to make clear that this didn’t reflect our point of view and that we thought Hilary should apologize.”

Plouffe also pointed out that the country should be even more than usually willing to move on from this controversy because we’ve reached bipartisan agreement that stay-at-home motherhood has an intrinsic value Rosen’s comments ignored. (That’s nice!)

Does issuing a curt, condemnatory phrase really constitute standing up to friends, though? I appreciate that the president’s campaign sought to distance itself from Rosen, no matter what the political motivations for doing so. But I’d appreciate it even more if he’d stand up to his real friends:

Why hasn’t he stood up to Eric Holder on Fast and Furious?

Why didn’t he stand up to Tim Geithner on his tax evasion? Jeffrey Immelt?

Why didn’t he stand up to Democratic donors at Solyndra?

Why didn’t he stand up to environmentalists on Keystone XL?

These are just the first four examples off the top of my head. Please feel free to add more to the list.

Bottom line: I don’t really care whether my president stands up to commentators on the right or left. Is it nice? Sure. Is it necessary? No. I do, however, care deeply whether he sells the average American out again and again and again by failing to stand up to power players inside his own administration.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/obama-aides-this-whole-hilary-rosen-episode-shows-that-obama-is-willing-to-take-on-his-friends/feed/141190141Awww: Rosen declines spot on Meet the Presshttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/awww-rosen-declines-spot-on-meet-the-press/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/awww-rosen-declines-spot-on-meet-the-press/#commentsFri, 13 Apr 2012 16:11:15 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190111It looks like one progressive strategist has finally learned the First Rule of Holes. Earlier, NBC had announced that Hilary Rosen would square off against Rep. Michele Bachmann on Meet the Press this Sunday, which would have been “almost inexplicable,” as Jennifer Rubin wrote a short while ago. Did Democrats really want to extend this argument throughout the weekend?

“Not going on #MTP this weekend. I’m going to be a mom who stays home.”

Rubin put the initial decision to appear on MTP in proper perspective:

There is no good that can come of this for Obama. Even if Rosen is repentant the story gets new oxygen. And if she, as is likely, says, “I am sorry, but. . .” and then continues to claim that Ann Romney, who is a cancer survivor and MS patient, doesn’t understand ordinary voters or that Republicans don’t understand women, the backlash will continue.

So why is she doing it? As a PR professional, doesn’t she understand the folly of her dragging out the story? A sympathetic Republican official told me if it were he, he’d sure want to “clear my name” and preserve his professional credibility. “What does Rosen tell her PR clients? ‘This is how I handled it’ [when she was the subject of a PR disaster].”

Yes, this episode hasn’t exactly been a resume-builder for Rosen. There is already some grumbling about Rosen’s resume-building among Democrats anyway, as Politico’s Ben White reported in his e-mail blast Money Matters this morning:

EXCLUSIVE: ROSEN FIASCO EXTENDS W.H. GENDER WARS – Per a senior Dem: “Serious Dem operatives are aghast at Hilary Rosen’s misguided attack on Ann Romney’s work history. She and others at PR firm SKD Knickerbocker have represented many clients that have raised hackles with senior White House staff. It’s an open secret in the Dem consultant community that SKD has been signing up clients based on ‘perceived White House access’ tied to prior relationships and employment. An example is the Gerson Lehrman Group, the NY based international firm that is a broker for consultants to the business community, but there are many others. …

“A sure sign of WH displeasure is the strong and fast repudiation of Rosen’s remarks by David Axelrod and other staffers. Rosen’s [initial] refusal to apologize in the face of a WH request to do so was seen by senior aides as a maddening example of political freelancing and self-promotion that only undermines the president and his re-election effort …. Remember when Anita Dunn made a splash about the ‘male dominated’ WH? She and Hillary are pitching clients at SKD together. Hilary’s refusal to cowtow [sic] to the (so far) male voices in the WH and campaign trying to rein her in is a continuation of those WH gender wars.”

Well, the “perceived White House access” seems accurate enough. Hilary B. Rosen visited the White House at least 35 times in the past three years, including at least five meetings with President Barack Obama himself, and more with inner-circle members David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. Not too many people have that kind of access to a President even once. Spinning it now as “perceived access” looks more like a dodge to distance Rosen from POTUS.

That brings up another question. Did Rosen back out on her own, or did someone in that inner circle tell her to clam up, as Ben White reported above? Is the White House silencing women now? I’m sure NOW will be all over that.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/awww-rosen-declines-spot-on-meet-the-press/feed/127190111NOW president: Ann Romney lacks “life experience” and “imagination” to relate to most Americanshttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/now-president-ann-romney-lacks-life-experience-and-imagination-to-relate-to-most-americans/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/now-president-ann-romney-lacks-life-experience-and-imagination-to-relate-to-most-americans/#commentsFri, 13 Apr 2012 14:26:46 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190096Via Newsbusters, NOW President Terry O’Neill ignores the First Rule of Holes (stop digging!) and provides another cycle for Republicans to defend Ann Romney and stay-at-home moms. Instead of leaving bad enough alone, O’Neill appeared on Ed Schultz’ MSNBC show last night and attempted to rewrite Hilary Rosen’s faceplant and keep the attack on Ann Romney for not having a salaried job in the workforce as a means to paint the Romneys as out of touch. Say, remember when feminism meant supporting the choices of women and defending them from being marginalized and demeaned? Good times, good times:

TERRY O’NEILL: What would we be saying if Hillary Clinton had said this: that Ann Romney has never, has not worked for pay outside the home a day in her life? That’s my understanding that’s an accurate statement, and that raises the exact issue that Hilary Rosen was trying to get to, which is do Mr. & Mrs. Romney have the kind of life experience and if not, the imagination, to really understand what most American families are going through right now? I think that that was what Hilary was getting out, and so she left out the words “for pay outside the home.”

Stick around to the end to see Rep. Maxine Waters keep it classy by calling the presumptive Republican nominee “Mitt Rot-ney,” but O’Neill is the real show here. Once again, we get to see the professional Left’s utter disdain for women who chose to stay home with their children rather than work in the workplace. Do they also lack “life experience” and “imagination”? Are their political and economic views also irrelevant? Is a woman’s worth entirely measured by her salary? Is that the official position of NOW? If so, then perhaps they may want to think about an official name change.

My friend Jonathan Martin of Politico commented on Twitter about how quickly the Right embraced grievance politics in this instance. It’s a worthwhile point, and this can certainly get overplayed, but it ignores a couple of other points. First, Democrats have been accusing the GOP of conducting a “war on women” since February of last year, when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz explicitly made that accusation, and which VP Joe Biden reiterated last night — on the same show, despite claims from Democrats earlier in the day that they never indulged in that language:

Vice President Joe Biden said tonight that what he called a Republican-led effort to rollback the rights of women is “real” and will “intensify.”

“I think the ‘war on women’ is real,” Biden told MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” deploying the politically-charged phrase for the first time on the national stage.

“And look, I’ll tell you when it’s going to intensify – the next president of the United States is going to get to name one, possibly two or more, members to the Supreme Court,” he added.

The grievance fight in this case has been under way for fourteen months, so to blame the Right for responding is a little odd. Also, Rosen took a swipe at a candidate’s wife, as O’Neill did again last night. Once again, don’t blame the Right for responding to it.

Update: Democrats claim to be backing away from the “war on women” rhetoric, but neither Biden nor their merchandisers have gotten the message.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/13/now-president-ann-romney-lacks-life-experience-and-imagination-to-relate-to-most-americans/feed/539190096Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/quotes-of-the-day-995/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/quotes-of-the-day-995/#commentsFri, 13 Apr 2012 02:30:23 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190072“A moment of silence, please, for a talking point that was taken too soon. The ‘war on women’ began its life in a February 2011 House speech about abortion. After a short life as a Democratic hobby horse, it died during the second week of April 2012. The cause of death: Rosengate, the latest and least explicable battle in the Umbrage Wars…

“As Romney and the RNC fought back, Democrats started to choke. In her fateful CNN appearance, right before she evaluated Ann Romney’s economics cred, Hilary Rosen begged the media to ‘just get rid of this word, ‘war on women.” After all, ‘the Obama campaign does not use it, President Obama does not use it — this is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using.’

“On Thursday, as the Rosen saga unfolded, DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse echoed her plea for peace. ‘I’m not a fan of the term,’ he said in an interview. ‘I mean, I’m sure I’ve probably used it. We all fall into these easy vernaculars … but we in the DNC have not been running a campaign based on the term ‘war on Women.’ That’s a myth cooked up by Republicans.'”

***

“Let’s be clear: Raising children full time is work. Being the spouse who runs the household full time is work. And it’s work that society often doesn’t value or treat with respect. In addition to running their homes and supporting their husband’s endeavors, stay-at-home moms are often the people who keep the school board running, do the volunteering for community activities, and even support the women in their neighborhood who work outside the home. When I was a child, and my archaeologist mother had to work late, guess who watched me? Yep, the stay-at-home mom next door.

“The idea that ‘women’s work’ is indeed valuable to society has long been a contention of feminists, so it’s strange to see a prominent Democrat lash out a stay-at-home mother and wife in this fashion. Feminists have agitated for as long as I can remember for society to value and respect the ‘unpaid work’ that women do in the home and society. The fact that Ann Romney doesn’t struggle financially doesn’t make what she does any less valuable. I suspect there is a lot about how she has contributed to her community that we don’t know.”

***

“Growing up in Michigan, Mrs. Romney pitched in at her father’s company, Jered Industries in Troy, as she has recalled on the campaign trail in February. The firm manufactured heavy machinery for the maritime industry.

“As an adult, Mrs. Romney turned her talents as a chef into something of a small business in Massachusetts. She and a friend held cooking classes for local foodies, according to her son Josh, who described the sessions in a 2007 interview with The New York Times.

“The data, though, don’t support the impression that staying at home is a luxury. A detailed 2010 study by two Census Bureau sociologist, in fact, found the opposite: While stay-at-home motherhood has become less common over time, the women who stay at home are increasingly those whose low education means they can’t earn enough money to making working outside the home worthwhile.

“‘The main effect showed that compared with 1969, women with less than a high school degres were more likely o be a state-at-home mother than women with a high school degree,’ the study’s authors, Rose Kreider and Diana Elliott, wrote, a trend that ‘accentuated in later decades.’…

“‘I think the war on women is real,’ Biden said in an interview he sat for with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz as part of a campaign trip to New Hampshire to talk up the Buffett rule. ‘And, look, I tell you where it’s going to intensify: the next president of the United States is going to get to name one and possibly two or more members of the Supreme Court.'”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/quotes-of-the-day-995/feed/558190072Blitzer to Hilary Rosen: Go on and look into the camera and talk to Ann Romneyhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/blitzer-to-hilary-rosen-go-on-and-look-into-the-camera-and-talk-to-ann-romney/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/blitzer-to-hilary-rosen-go-on-and-look-into-the-camera-and-talk-to-ann-romney/#commentsFri, 13 Apr 2012 00:08:26 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=190014Via Greg Hengler, skip to 2:25 for my very favorite moment from this entire daylong clusterfark. Media firestorms come and go, my friends, but how often do they involve hostage-video apologies to the camera by the transgressor? When she was done, I half-expected him to say, “I didn’t see any tears.” Note to Ann Romney: If CNN offers to have you on together with Rosen, you must, must agree, if only in the interest of video gold when Blitz inevitably says, “How about a hug?”

If you’re not up for watching the whole clip after that, at least skip to 7:00 for when he asks her whether she’s received any supportive phone calls from prominent Democrats in the White House, the Obama campaign DNC, etc. Hmmmmm. Exit question: Is there anything left of this story to milk for traffic? The Twitter supernova has begun to fade and the opportunistic campaign merchandise has already been rolled out. Can an intrepid, content-hungry blogger find some other wrinkle to exploit? Stay tuned…

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/blitzer-to-hilary-rosen-go-on-and-look-into-the-camera-and-talk-to-ann-romney/feed/292190014Obama on Rosen and Ann Romney: “There’s no tougher job than being a mom”http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/obama-on-rosen-and-ann-romney-theres-no-tougher-job-than-being-a-mom/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/obama-on-rosen-and-ann-romney-theres-no-tougher-job-than-being-a-mom/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2012 22:01:56 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=189991Box status: Checked. Have there been any prominent Democrats today, incidentally, who’ve ridden to Rosen’s defense, even if only to say that her point’s been misconstrued? Axelrod and Messina, shrewdly anticipating the bomb blast to come, ducked and covered last night by criticizing her right away on Twitter for what she said. I thought for sure that America’s most lifelike talking-points robot would mumble something this morning about “distractions” from the war that Mitt Romney wants to wage against women and children and seniors and etc etc etc, but even her operating system can’t run that program. Just as I’m writing this, the right’s favorite liberal feminist has a piece up at the Daily Beast scolding Rosen for what she said. Will no top Democratic pol help a blogger out with some free content by wading into this clusterfark on Rosen’s behalf? C’mon, Pelosi. You know you wanna.

The lingering question: Did Rosen stumble into this attack on her own or, given her chumminess with Team Hopenchange, was there maybe possibly conceivably a little nudge from someone somewhere about targeting Ann Romney? Ann is, as John Nolte explains, a major asset to Romney on the trail potentially. With Obama already betting heavily on a gender gap in November, framing Ann as some sort of socialite layabout caricature would reduce her appeal to women and push the all-important “rich parasites” element to O’s class-warfare message. I’m firmly in the “Rosen blundered” camp on this question, but that’s not necessarily contradictory to the idea of O’s campaign wanting to neutralize Ann early somehow. Could be that Rosen was looking to do that for them and just did a horribly bad job of it.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/obama-on-rosen-and-ann-romney-theres-no-tougher-job-than-being-a-mom/feed/238189991Jay Carney on Rosen’s WH visits: I personally know three women named “Hilary Rosen”http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/jay-carney-on-rosens-wh-visits-i-personally-know-three-women-named-hilary-rosen/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/jay-carney-on-rosens-wh-visits-i-personally-know-three-women-named-hilary-rosen/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2012 20:51:45 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=189964Admit it. Deep down, although you hate yourself for it, you kind of admire the sheer balls it takes to lie to a room full of reporters like this with a straight face. Not even a hint of sheepishness in his demeanor at playing this dumb, even though the “Hilary B. Rosen” who turns up in the White House logs has the same middle initial and the same unorthodox spelling of “Hilary” (with one L) as our heroine. You earned your pay today, Jay.

Usually I can get a sense of when a full-fledged media shinolastorm is brewing from the amount of early buzz about a story on Twitter, but I didn’t see this one coming. There was some anger about it last night in my timeline after she did her hit on CNN but I figured it’d be a one-hour thing. Sixteen hours later, here we are. I’ve been thinking about that all day: What essential ingredients are needed to turn indignation at a strategist on the other side into a sensation that dominates the day’s news cycle? Obviously there’s genuine offense at the heart of it about stay-at-home moms being demeaned, especially by a sneering Beltway bien-pensant, but that’s not normally page-one news. Other possible ingredients:

— Payback for The One’s moronic “war on women” demagoguery. It’s one thing to see Ann Romney and other moms insulted, it’s another to have it done by Team Hopenchange, whose record on gender equality doesn’t quite justify the amount of finger-wagging it tends to do on this topic. Axelrod and company deserve to have their faces rubbed in this pile of bilge, even if they did run screaming from Rosen on Twitter after her CNN segment.

— Punishment for the left’s perceived disdain for full-time moms. Rosen’s comments match how the right thinks the left — or at least the left’s intelligentsia — actually sees stay-at-home mothers, even though liberals will never admit it. The Political Math guy summed it up in one simple Venn diagram. It’s not really about Rosen, it’s about hammering liberals for trying to hide from her Kinsleyan gaffe simply because it’s politically inconvenient for them to come clean.

— Pushback against media bias. The press would have wet itself had a righty pundit disparaged stay-at-home moms this way — “war on women, war on women!!1!” — so the right’s going to do its best to reduce the double standard by making this story as big a deal as possible. The noisier things get, the more the media has to grit its teeth and spend ink and airtime on a meme that’s unhelpful to their boyfriend.

— It’s a way to unite behind Romney. That’ll be a process, of course, not something that happens overnight, but after a long primary it feels good to come to the defense of a standard-bearer whom many grassroots conservatives still don’t quite trust. Special thanks to Rosen for choosing as her target the single most likable member of the Romney campaign. That made things easy.

Anything else I’m missing? I think the second reason is what’s chiefly driving it, even more so than scoring a point on Obama and making him back off on the “war on women” crap. It’s the suspicion that progressives generally, not just Rosen, look down on women who can afford to work but who choose to stay at home, either because they underestimate the amount of labor involved or because they think full-time motherhood is “unhelpful” to the cause of feminism. Anyway, read Kevin Williamson at NRO for more on that.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/jay-carney-on-rosens-wh-visits-i-personally-know-three-women-named-hilary-rosen/feed/284189964Greta van Susteren defends “my friend” Hilary Rosen Update: Rosen apologizeshttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/greta-van-susteren-defends-my-friend-hilary-rosen/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/greta-van-susteren-defends-my-friend-hilary-rosen/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2012 18:16:36 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=189888You’ve already read Ed’s take, my take and Erika’s take on different aspects of Hilary Rosen’s remarks (haven’t you? Please make my day and tell me you have!) — but Greta offers yet another perspective that I think is worth sharing because it enables us to take this discussion in a direction other than a defense of stay-at-home motherhood. In a post that Greta herself admits was hastily composed, the Fox News host defends her “friend” Hilary Rosen with this:

In making her remark about Mrs. Romney and her choice to raise a family and not work outside the home, I know Hilary knows raising children is hard work, really hard work…the absolute hardest work. Hilary has children. That is the best way to know the challenge of raising children – have them! Hilary is not anti-stay-at-home mom.

I did not read Hilary’s comments to in anyway take away from hard chore of raising children or staying at home and raising them and not working outside the family. I read it to mean that raising children without financial pressure is easier than having financial pressure. This is not to take away from Mrs. Romney – she has done a spectacular job raising 5 great sons – but to face the reality that financial pressure does make it harder to raise a family. This is also not to say that the Romney family success is anything to be ashamed of…the family should be very proud of its success. I admire success, don’t you?

Greta’s remarks invite nothing so much as they invite a critique of all the strategizing, consulting and soundbite construction that characterizes political communications these days. Here’s why: If Rosen meant to say that parenthood is made more difficult by financial pressure, then why didn’t she say that?

Either (a) she meant to say what she said or (b) she didn’t mean to say what she said but said it anyway. Why would she say it anyway? Maybe because she was on a TV program spouting opinions about a subject she really hasn’t thought all that deeply about because she just flat-out hasn’t had time to think deeply about it.

The irony of 24/7 communications — especially communications that are mediated by the, er, media — is that we’re often left wondering what the people with whom we’re communicating really meant to say and added layers of “walking back” or “doubling down” don’t usually help us to decipher the truth. If the evening news had any edge over 24/7 news and if print media had any edge over electronic media, it’s that nobody could use the excuse, “That’s not what I meant to say.” Nobody would plausibly believe that somebody spent all day working on saying something but then didn’t mean to say it.

“I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended,” Rosen said in a statement. “Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.

“As a mom I know that raising children is the hardest job there is,” Rosen said. “As a pundit, I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen.

“In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his poor record on the plight of women’s financial struggles. As a partner in a firm full of women who work outside of the home as well as stay-at-home mothers, all with plenty of children, gender equality is not a talking point for me. It is an issue I live every day.”

This only serves to underscore what I wrote above. Rosen still hasn’t taken responsibility for the ideas she expressed. She’s just saying she didn’t mean to offend and she chose her words poorly.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/greta-van-susteren-defends-my-friend-hilary-rosen/feed/497189888Video: Ann Romney responds to stay-at-home mom controversy on “America’s Newsroom”http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/video-ann-romney-responds-to-stay-at-home-mom-controversy-on-americas-newsroom/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/video-ann-romney-responds-to-stay-at-home-mom-controversy-on-americas-newsroom/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2012 17:21:30 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=189891If she weren’t doubling down on her controversial comments and dismissing the genuine consternation she caused as “faux outrage,” Hilary Rosen might actually inspire a little pity in me. Oh, I wouldn’t feel sorry for her because she’s been vigorously rebuked by the right. No, I’d feel sorry for her because I know — as she seems not to have known — that few women could possibly come out looking more sympathetic or appealing as persons by inviting comparisons with Ann Romney. Breast cancer survivor, MS patient, devoted wife and, er, hard-working mother, Mrs. Romney is a woman to admire and to emulate. By comparison, Rosen seems about as small as — what’s our comparison du jour, again? oh, that’s right — an insect.

Not surprisingly, then, Romney’s handling of Rosengate has been far better than Rosen’s. While Rosen, to borrow a sarcastic phrase from Jim Treacher, shows off her expertise in damage control, Ann Romney delivers this:

What I like best about this interview is that Ann Romney saves her ire for one of Rosen’s more overlooked comments. Martha MacCallum plays a clip of the Obama insider saying this about Mitt Romney:

He seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women and I think that comes across and I think that that’s going to hurt him over the long-term because he doesn’t really see us as equals.

Ann responds with a slightly sterner voice, “Now, that does bother me.”

It bothers me, too. Just because Mitt supports stay-at-home motherhood, he doesn’t see women as equals? Sometimes, I think it’s women like Rosen who don’t think women are equal. If they did, they would recognize that it’s worth just as much to stay home with children as it is to work outside the home.

That’s true in terms of economics, too. Does Rosen not pay her daycare provider? Do we as a society not pay housecleaners, chauffeurs, teachers and nurses? Stay-at-home parents fill all these roles at one time or another. One working spouse plus one stay-at-home spouse equals one of the best possible of all economic partnerships! It’s time for Rosen and others to remember that the marketplace — in which all “working” men and women work — actually arose to satisfy the needs of the household, not the other way around.

There was a time when each household had to provide everything for itself. Economy, in fact, comes from the Greek word for household management, and it refers to all the activity necessary for a household to have what it needs. Each family planted crops, hunted game, spun its own cloth and so forth in a division of labor that assured that everyone in the household had what he or she needed to live well. And a household typically included not only a nuclear family, but also extended relatives and servants, because it took a lot of people to perform all the necessary tasks.

“Business” is a form of task specialization by which the household outsources to others what it used to have to do by itself. Increasing specialization of this kind has led to massive changes in social organization, but it hasn’t changed the essential nature of the activity, which is to provide households with what they need to live well. We don’t talk about economics in these terms because we have become philosophical materialists, interested only in what and how, never concerning ourselves with the questions of origin (Why does this arise?) or purpose (To what end is it ordered?). It’s not necessary for a woman to “contribute” to the world of work. The world of work exists to be sure she has what she needs for her family (emphasis mine).

So, um, actually, Mitt Romney should be asking Ann about the economy. She and other stay-at-home moms like her know it better than anyone.

Meanwhile, feminists should take a good, hard look at themselves and ask what kind of sad self-contempt it is that leads them to decry what is traditionally considered “women’s work” as somehow worth less than what is traditionally considered “man’s work.” Guess what? There are some things that women (in general — yes, I’m stereotyping here) can’t do that men can do — but the same is true in reverse. Men can’t do all that we can (especially the obvious — birth children!). Why do we as women feel so compelled to try to do what only men can do to prove our equality? They don’t feel compelled to try to birth children to prove theirs.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/video-ann-romney-responds-to-stay-at-home-mom-controversy-on-americas-newsroom/feed/139189891Democrats declare war on women? Update: Frequent White House visitor?http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/democrats-declare-war-on-women/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/12/democrats-declare-war-on-women/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2012 12:41:58 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=189818By the time Allahpundit included this clip in his QOTD post, DNC adviser and Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s attack on Ann Romney had already raised eyebrows. By the time the clocks clicked past midnight, her remarks had become so infamous that Barack Obama’s campaign leaders had to go on Twitter to toss Rosen under the proverbial bus. Rosen scoffed at the notion that a stay-at-home mom of five, who also happens to be battling MS and has survived cancer, has any insight into economic concerns of women in America:

Rosen later wrote a “clarification” at the Huffington Post expressing her admiration for Ann Romney’s “grit” in dealing with her illnesses, but the damage had already been done. Incredibly, Rosen later complained that Ann Romney “didn’t answer my follow up tweet to her! Which I thought was respectful and sincere.” What was Rosen’s idea of “respectful and sincere”? How about this: “I am raising children too. But u do know that most young american women have to earn a living AND raise their kids don’t u?”

Yeah, it’s Ann Romney’s fault for not replying to such a “respectful” riposte, huh? Rosen’s the real victim here.

The Romney campaign blasted Rosen as an “Obama adviser” (she’s tied to the DNC, not the Obama campaign) and called this “their new ‘kill Ann’ strategy and in the process insul[t] hard-working moms.” And that had Team Obama worried enough for a couple of heavy hitters to take to Twitter late last night to do damage control. David Axelrod, Obama’s closest adviser, tweeted: “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.” Jim Messina, who runs the Obama 2012 campaign, demanded an apology from Rosen: “I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.”

It’s too late for that; the mask has already slipped. Rosen has delivered the Left’s honest opinion about women who choose to stay home to raise their children, and unless the DNC distances themselves from her, we can assume that’s the official Democratic Party position. If Democrats wanted to see Republicans unite behind Mitt Romney, they picked the best possible strategy to make it happen by declaring war on Ann Romney and stay-at-home moms.

Update: Democrats were quick to insist that Rosen has no role at the White House, but Jim Geraghty reports that the rebuttal seems to be more of an issue of semantics:

“You know essentially, you’ve taken on sort of the most sympathetic person in the candidate’s realm, the wife, who is taking care of the children, supporting the husband, doing everything she can because she loves him … [it’s a] stupid strategy.”